Character Deficit

I've just taken a turn from Wikipedia to the Ellis Island search. I did this a few years ago, before there were visual manifest records from the ships that arrived. I entered my grandfather's name -- Thomas Finn -- and found him, as I had several years ago. Then I clicked on "Ship Manifest" and got a chilling feeling. There, on an old form, with lots of rows and columns, labelled "steerage passengers", my Grandfather (who died before I was born, leaving a long trail of myths in his wake, and tears in my Dad's eyes whenever he mentioned him) was on a list with 4 others arriving from Ireland that day on the Lusitania (before it sank).

There was a check on the line next to his name under the columns labeled "Read?" and "Write?" He listed someone whose first name was unintelligble, but whose last name was "Ronayne" and lived at 153 Pavonia Avenue in Jersey City. (Now I know why that obnoxious drunk Mike Ronayne remained a sidekick of my father's all those years: his father probably hosted my grandfather when he immigrated from Mitchelstown Ireland on June 25, 1909, the date of the manifest). The manifest indicated that he had $40 in cash on that day. The columns "Whether a Polygamist" and "Whether an Anarchist" were blank. He was 5'-8", his hair "dark," his eyes "gray."

There was a separate sheet where a doctor certified the health of ALL the passengers listed on the sheet with my grandfather, and another where a lawyer vouched for ALL the passengers' not having been felons in their country of origin (All Irish).

There was a similar manifest for my Grandmother, Margaret Finn, on September 9, 1909, and her daughter (I believe her name was Helen, but it's not indicated). Helen died of rheumatic heart when my Dad was a little boy, born after Mary, and, in Jersey City. He always told folks he had been "conceived in Ireland." But the date on that manifest makes that impossible--he was born on October 12, 1910. So his embarassing boast turned out to be a lie afterall.

My Grandmother had $10 in her pocket, and listed "Thomas Finn, 153 Pavonia Ave, Jersey City, NJ" as the relative whom she'd be staying with. It listed him as her husband, and, one line down, as Helen's father. Her hair was "dark." Her eyes "brown." They arrived together on a ship called the Arcadia.

My grandparents had made a go of their own business in Cork, Ireland, eschewing the family's dairy farm in Mitchelstown. Their bakery, alas, failed, and at the time, migration to the U.S. was increasingly the choice of young industrious types looking for opportunity. They had already lost one child, Nelly (Mary) to childhood disease, and then had Helen. In their late 20s, they had the guts to separate from each other, with my grandfather travelling across to Jersey City to seek work while Margaret stayed with family, waiting to be beckoned to cross over to him.

What courage they had, what fears they must have had in making this dark mysterious choice with their young lives. My grandfather got work as a teamster on the docks in downtown Manhattan. They eventually bought a brick rowhouse at 144 Erie Street in Jersey City. They proceeded to have four more kids: My Dad (Thomas), and his sisters Margaret, Alice, and Cathleen. Cathleen is the only one who remains, and she never left Jersey City. My Dad was the only one who did, and not because he wanted to, but because he had to in order to get work to feed 8 kids.

I sit in my 3500 sf, 4-bedroom house with a ridiculous level of comfort and space. I am scared out of my wits about retreating now to a 3-bedroom apartment with a ridiculous level of luxury and security. I do not anticipate becoming a faceless name on a manifest, with checks and numbers under columns for my height, my health, my political leanings, and other depersonalizing characteristics. But I whine, I complain, I view the whole thing as a terrible inconvenience, and blame my husband for not being more stable, more settled when I married him (as if I didn't know!).

The reality is, we are merely retreating from a time of conspicuous consumption to a finite 5-year period of middle-class budgeting and frugality. Hardly a trip across the ocean with $10 in your pocket.

Is devolution a fact? It seems to be when it comes to my character. I wish to have their fortitude, Margaret and Tom. I'll bet she didn't whine (although I hear she did nag a bit). I'll bet she just did what she had to do, in true Irish, stoic, Rose-Kennedy fashion: "She never cried in public. What a strong woman."

Maybe displaying feelings IS overrated. Maybe some things call for restraint, for quiet sacrifice, for giving way of self. I pray for that kind of strength to give way and have faith that motives based on giving a better life to the ones you love will carry you through times of self-deprivation. I pray that is so.

Can I fix it?

I've blown up one too many times this week. Stress having to be a working mom on my own with Noel away during the week. I took it out on Blake. Not in an obvious way, just in letting my voice rise, crying too much, being generally a drag and not less than a bit scary.

I worry that I am making him my partner. I apologize to him and try to explain, as though a 3-year old could remotely know what the heck I'm talking about. At one point tonight, I was in the kitchen yelling at the sink, banging the collander against the sides, while Blake was at the top of the stairs, yelling and crying. Both of us yelling, both of us longing, both of us disappointed in each other, in life, in everything that moment wasn't that we each wanted it to be. Both in absolute pain at precisely the same moment. Both of us causing it in the other person. But, I'm the grownup, and I should not have let myself fall apart so badly.

I need more than help at this point. I need to change the parts of my life that are so broken, so un-fixable. I need to take off this brooks brothers suit of a life and breathe as myself again. My son is seeing me as an unsuccessful cypher. I crawl out of myself wailing, hating, raging, and he sees. And on some level he knows. And he accumulates memory, and builds a relationship with me and with himself. And I damage that, chip away at him, make his life a little less than it could be every time my feelings take up so much space that they crowd him out.

I will never raise my hand to my son. But please, someone, teach me how to never raise my voice, never act scary, never have to look at a kid with the look in the eye I had for my father, that look of cowering, that fear that he'd do to me what I saw him do to the other kids. That silent loathing I had for him because I knew, and he knew I knew, that he hated himself. I don't want to hate myself anymore. I want to love myself if, for no other reason, than to teach Blake a better way to live.

I don't mind him learning from my mistakes. That's called progress. But I deeply mind his learning how to adapt to my emotional landscape out of fear and longing. I deeply mind his living my pain just so I can see what it looks like on some unconscious, self-absorbed level.

God, please give me the strength to feel the love for my son just a hair of a second before I let myself cause him to be afraid. Please help me with this.

Toosmalltoolargetoomuch

I am a small container and I spill over all within me that I can't keep underneath myself. There is too much love when I touch him, his little curls, his tiny body, his soft skin under cotton pajamas with tiny dinosaurs and long green pants. He is utterly perfect, and so much more than I can imagine being able to love. My love is too much for me, and never enough to fill what I want to fill in his life. He is the sun, moon, stars, every cliche, and I don't care. I've never loved until now. No lover, husband, man, father, person, endeavor measures up. They were all a big waste of time, marking time until the ultimate love in my little Blake's tiny, short little life. Biology sucks, and it's not everything. It's not anything. We are just a place for the spirit to squeeze themselves into, and my spirit is so much bigger than me, my love so much more than me that I can't deliver it except in flowing tears as I hold his sleeping body across my legs, aching to be the same spirit, aching to raise him up above the world and say it is all his. He is the world, my world, and more than any dream I deferred when I deferred the ultimate love in my life. I beg my mother for lessons on how she loved. I know now why she drank -- it wasn't the despair, the lack of love, but the utter pain of having too much love for the world to bear, more love than perhaps a child needs. The burden of being a mother is to handle the overflow. And I am such a small container.

What Now?

I turned 46 and it didn't matter to anyone. No birthday party, no cake, no best wishes. I spent the day driving back from Ohio where I had just handed our soon-to-be adopted daughter back to her birthmother. Not ready to write about that yet.

My husband is going to school to pursue his dreams. I am in a deadend job that I hate, and in which I am trapped until he completes his studies. I committed to it, so I stick it out with a three-year old and a high stress job. If I sound like I've got self-pity, that's true. But the feeling of being trapped in a life not of my making is overwhelming.

I wanted all my life to pursue the truth of myself. I've put it on the back burner, squeezing pieces out every now and then in the form of an isolated performance, song, play, and, most recently, parenthood. I have never had the luxury of the thing I hold most dear being the focus of my life.

On my third marriage, I have always placed the husband's goals ahead of mine. My second husband is thriving on the back of a business I helped to build, and for which I never received a paycheck. Now, I am helping a husband 9 years my junior achieve his dreams just in time for me to get beyond 50 and have a ton of his student loans to handle (he just informed me that he no longer wants to go to law school, but rather prefers to be a professor, so student loans are going to be a reality for me for years to come).

I will never be what I dreamed of being, and I'm married to a man who doesn't care as long as he is liked by everyone. He wants to be a professor because he wants to be the center of attention and the smartest in the room. For that, my life is being flushed away. I'm sick of it, I'm trapped, and I can't get out.

Somebody help.

Christmas Loser

Christmas time in this house is rarely a happy time. Four years ago, Christmas eve brought a phone call from Noel's mom about her terminal cancer. She passed away four months later, and Noel has never been the same. His depression about his mom, and about his still-alive but unavailable father, make December in general a hellish time. Last year, it was combined with his surgery, and visits from family, which turned out to be a pressure cooker of rage and emotions. Today, we are burying Squeaky our cat. He had to be put to sleep last night after a sudden paralysis. I pray for his little soul. We will miss him.

Waiting it out

What is it I'm fearing? Getting old? Death? I don't know anymore. But this fear has my whole body stuck in the ground and I can't move. I'm stuck in one place, unable to reach for the things I treasure most. I don't believe things happen for a reason. I don't believe in fate. I don't believe that what I believe has any intrinsic value.

I am working late tonight. Only five and a half years--Blake will be 8, Lulu (if she ever comes) will be 5, I'll be 50, and I'll be free to be their Mom. I'll be home when Blake gets home from school. I'll make the beds and do the laundry and go to the store with one of those old-lady carts (instead of my car). I'll sing and play the piano again, I'll make art, my heart will shine once again.

I am so starved for the meat of me, whatever that is. So lonely in my soul, so empty in my life.

Go ahead, call me bourgeois (however you spell it). I'm fond also of "dilletante" (however you spell it). Or "whining b!@$#E^". That has a nice ring to it!

Going Home

It's nearly 6 pm, and I'm still at work. My husband and 2-yr old son are at home, going to an ice cream social. I miss them, so my first entry will be brief. I'll talk with you some other time!!